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Regional Water Board

CVCWA’s mission includes effectively representing the interests of wastewater agencies in the Central Valley in regulatory matters. Most regulatory activity for CVCWA members is with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Regional Water Board or RWB). The Regional Water Board is responsible for formulating and adopting water quality control plans for the Central Valley Region (which includes the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Tulare Lake Basins), issuing permits prescribing discharge requirements, and enforcing these permits.

CVCWA engages with the Regional Water Board to assure that regulatory actions are protective of the environment, are based on sound scientific information, and reflect a fair and reasonable economic basis. Ideally we do this by working cooperatively with the Regional Water Board, its staff members and other stakeholders at the beginning phases of regulatory development and by providing constructive comments throughout regulatory proceedings. CVCWA’s goal is to serve as a resource to the Water Board and others.

Recent Activity

Some of the initiatives that CVCWA is involved with at the Regional Water Board are summarized below. Detailed information on the RegionalWater Board’s activities can be found at their website at http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralvalley/ or by clicking the link for the program below.

CVCWA’s comment letters on Regional Water Board activities can be accessed below, sorted by subject matter. Jump to comment letters.

Permits: The Regional Water Board issues tentative waste discharge requirements for municipal wastewater treatment plants and others. CVCWA reviews these tentative orders with the perspective of balancing environmental and economic interests consistent with state and federal law. CVCWA engages with Regional Water Board staff in areas of concern. In some cases, CVCWA may provide written and/or oral comments on these tentative orders.

Basin Planning Efforts:

Triennial Reviews: Every three years, the Regional Water Board reviews its Basin Plans and prioritizes actions for modification thereto. CVCWA provides comments during this review and in some cases resources to implement recommendations of the Triennial Review.

TMDLs: Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) are a regulatory mechanism to address water quality problems when a waterbody is not meeting standards after traditional technology-based permitting mechanisms are put in place. Key TMDLs CVCWA is commenting on include:

Collaborative Policy and Basin Planning Efforts: In keeping with the Regional Water Board’s commitment to provide meaningful public involvement in governmental decisions and CVCWA’s goal of working cooperatively with the Regional Water Board and other stakeholders early in the regulatory development, CVCWA is participating in a number of policy and basin planning efforts that are being accomplished through a collaborative stakeholder process. These include:

Drinking Water Policy for Surface Waters of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta and Upstream Tributaries– CVCWA has been participating in the Drinking Water Policy Workgroup (Workgroup), formed to provide a stakeholder-based platform for development of this policy. The Workgroup is comprised of representatives from drinking water, wastewater treatment, municipal storm water and agricultural interests and federal and state agencies. The Workgroup has collaborated closely with Central Valley Water Board staff over the last several years to develop a draft policy, which has been informed by a number of technical studies performed specifically to assess drinking water constituents. The Draft Policy outlines Basin Plan and other Policies that protect municipal drinking water constituents of concern. Additionally a narrative objective for Cryptosporidium and giardia is proposed with a program of implementation and monitoring.

Municipal and Domestic Supply (MUN) Beneficial Use Project – CVCWA is participating in a collaborative stakeholder effort to address a process for evaluating if the MUN beneficial use is an appropriate use for agricultural drains and other facilities after a reinterpretation of Basin Plan language by the Regional Water Board concerning the application of the Sources of Drinking Water Policy to unnamed waterbodies.

The window below provides access to view and download CVCWA’s recent public documents concerning the Regional Water Board. These generally consist of comment letters and are organized in folders by subject matter.

Click here for instructions on how to use our file storage/retrieval system.

Announcements

Save the Date:

CVCWA Annual Conference

May 9, 2018 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.

More program and registration information available in Spring

Presentations and Handouts from the 2017 Annual Conference are available for download.